


The ghosts in my life

by GreenPhoenix



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Creepy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:13:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/pseuds/GreenPhoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim Bayliss is haunted by more than one type of ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The ghosts in my life

”Just when I think I'm winning  
When I've broken every door  
The ghosts of my life blow wilder than before”  
Japan ”Ghosts”

 

He’s had a ghost walking beside him all his life.  
Every step he’s taken has been observed by a gaunt-visaged fiend. He did not always sense it but it started when he was a child.

*

One night he remembered dozing beside his pet, a dog called Biscuit, feeling its serenity and the mist-covered warmth of its fur against his tiny body.  
He felt safe, unaware of the doom that already lurked outside his room.  
His father called his name and he woke, and went to greet his uncle as he often did.  
The man’s face was hungry and lean.  
He felt uncomfortable without knowing why in his innocence.  
George was a well-respected man, but Tim always feared him. Biscuit sensed it too and barked angrily.

*  
Later when he was a little older, but still a child his uncle began taking him into the bathroom and the horror began.  
He knew what his uncle did was wrong, but he dared not tell anyone.  
George seemed like a mortal man, but something evil lurked in him.  
His hungers were not mortal, but beastly.

*  
He finally gathered courage and told his father, but the man did not believe him.  
His father scolded him for lying, and he felt betrayed by his own kin.  
He grew up and his uncle stopped hurting him, but the shadow of what he had done always lingered.  
When he had his first girl, a sweet blonde called Gloria, he almost couldn’t do it, since he sensed a ghost watching his every move. It owned him.  
His dreams of boys were even worse; he knew his father spoke of men who loved other men with scorn. He wasn’t like that. He couldn’t be.

*  
Wherever he went he couldn’t shake the feeling of being pursued by some invisible fiend.  
Every action was tainted by the knowledge, every sorrow magnified.  
So of course he chose a profession that would allow him to lay ghosts to rest.  
He would speak for the dead. Avenge lost innocents.  
Adena. The eleven-year-old girl pursued him even as he could not catch her killer.  
He thought he had him, but he and Frank could not break the man.  
He felt Adena’s sad sigh as the man escaped his grip.  
She was only one of many ghosts that haunted his dreams.  
*  
In his head the ghosts became a chorus watching his very living hour.  
Even as he cared for George in his final months, and tried to drive away what the man had done by forgiving him, he could not succeed.  
He was yet living, but his sorrows made him a hollow, haunted creature.  
Even as he found love in the arms of a man, he could not be happy.  
His restless spirit drove him away from Chris.  
He had Frank, and he’d lay down his life for him.  
*  
He almost did, took a bullet for Frank and hovered in the land of the dead.  
He could sense what death would mean.  
For a while he pursued some kind of religion, but it was shattered when he had to shoot someone in self-defense.  
Later, watching a serial killer walk free, he knew what to do.  
He shot the man and the killer soon joined the eternal chorus in his head.  
It drove him mad. Frank had already left his side.  
*  
He confessed all to Frank, who with his priestly countenance could not absolve him of his sins.  
He knew what to do.  
There was only one way to shut up the ever-restless chorus.  
He took it, squeezing the trigger one final time, and joined the chorus for good.  
He lives with his ghosts now.  
His essence pursues the predators he hunted in life.  
It’s said that child killers in Baltimore all see a thin, tall shape haunting them till they confess.  
He’s a ghost they cannot shake.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Spook me challenge.


End file.
